Midnight
by AryaTyrell
Summary: Hermione's been bullied, and Harry's there to help her. One-shot.


"_Find three examples in history where the Draught of Living Death was most helpful,_" Harry muttered to himself for the umpteenth time. "Okay. I can do this…" he poised his quill over the parchment, waiting for the answer to hit him. Then he ran his hands through his already messed-up inky black hair, revealing his lightning-shaped scar for a split second.

It was nearly midnight, and Harry was the only one left in the common room, trying to finish his Potions homework, which was due first thing tomorrow morning. Ron had long since gone to bed, having been "worked like a house-elf" at Professor McGonagall's detention that evening. It was easy for Ron to skive off the homework because he currently had an "Acceptable" in Potions, but Harry had a "Dreadful," and if he wanted to be an Auror, he needed top marks. Harry flipped a few pages of _Potioneers of History _and hoped that the answer would somehow just jump out at him…

Harry slammed the book shut. Nothing. Figuring he'd just take the zero that Snape would give him tomorrow, he collected his parchment, quills, and ink bottle, and walked out of the deserted room. His footsteps echoed eerily on the spiral staircase.

As he was passing the door to the girl's dormitories, he saw the door was open a slit. He made to pull it shut, when a sound made him freeze, hand still on the doorknob. He knew that sound anywhere, and who made it.

A sob.

Harry stood there for a few more seconds, trying to make sure his hearing was working properly. There it was again. "Hermione?" he whispered into the darkness. The sobs quieted and suddenly the room became still. Harry shuffled into the room, closing the door as quietly as possible. Feeling around in the darkness, Harry sat on the edge of the bed next to the window (he knew this was Hermione's because he had seen her several times staring out the window from it). "What's wrong?" Harry asked. She didn't respond and feigned sleep. "Hermione, we both know you're awake. Now I'll ask again, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she mumbled.

"Oh, so… you're crying over nothing?"

"I was not crying," Hermione said. "Now will you please leave me alone?"

"I'm not leaving until you tell me what the problem is," Harry said firmly.

"Fine, if you want to know so badly," she said, sitting up. "Malfoy and his Slytherin gang tried to beat me up after Transfiguration the other day. Luckily, the teachers stopped them before they touched me."

Harry's eyes widened. "What-?" he began, but Hermione cut him off.

"Malfoy was the only one who got in trouble, so he decided to blame me. He threatened to really hurt me if I didn't sneak out tonight and join him and his gang to do something of secrecy. I met them by the Forbidden Forest. I was afraid of what they were going to do to me. I just thought they would throw a few punches and that would be it. But it wasn't.

"When I reached them, it was obvious that I was in way deeper then I could handle. I tried to walk away but Crabbe and Goyle grabbed me. They pulled me right into the middle of all of them. They each took their turn, hitting, punching, and kicking me. Soon, I was on the ground. I couldn't get up. I mean, I tried to get up but I was shaking hard. Then Pansy Parkinson sat on my chest, with a switchblade in her right hand. Then she grabbed my left arm and- and- started cutting my wrist," she said, tears welling in her eyes. "When she was done with my left, he moved onto the right. And they just stood there, laughing. 'Let's see how dirty her blood is!,' they kept yelling. After a while, I blacked out. When I woke up, I came back straightaway."

Harry sat there, frozen in shock. His best friend, the smartest girl in their year, the girl who'd known him since forever- had been put through something so tortuous. Harry stared at the defeated girl in front of him. He saw tears trickling down her cheeks, and she hurriedly wiped them away. Harry carefully reached out to take her left wrist in his hands, but she moved away before he made contact. "Hermione, I just want to see. I'm not going to hurt you," Harry promised her softly, gently taking her arm. He pushed back the cuff of her sleeve and gasped at the sight. Ten messy, zigzagging cuts ran on the inside of her arm, some still oozing scarlet drops of blood. He ran his fingers lightly over them, smearing blood on his fingertips. He looked back at his broken friend. The tears were coming faster now. "You have to go to Dumbledore," Harry told her.

"No," Hermione shook her head. "I'll just make more trouble," she mumbled.

"Make more trouble?" Harry half-whispered and half-shouted in disbelief.

"You saw what happened when I let the teachers interfere," Hermione sobbed, glancing at her cuts.

"Well… can I at least get you cleaned up?" Harry asked, hoping she'd allow him to. She nodded, and Harry crossed to the little sink a few feet away. He grabbed a washcloth from the stack by the faucet and ran it under the tap. When it was sufficiently damp, he tiptoed back to her bed and turned on the lamp to see her injuries in full. Harry wasn't the most medically trained person in the world, but he'd been to Madame Pomfrey's enough times to know what to do. He started with her arms, tenderly dabbing at dried blood around them, trying to ignore the yellowing bruises on her upper arm. Her face wasn't too bad, just a small scrape on her chin, so Harry decided to skip it.

"Tomorrow, you're going to Dumbledore," Harry said, tossing the washcloth back to the sink. He stood up to leave, but Hermione grabbed his arm.

"Come with me, please?" Hermione pleaded.

"Duh," he grinned at her, and Hermione broke into the first grin she'd worn in days. "Good night," he said, turning off the light.

When Harry finally stepped outside and closed the door, he felt a little dazed. Despite this, he felt extremely grateful at what he just did. Because at midnight, you can learn a lot.


End file.
